La Vanoise 1825

Actually it is kind of disappointing having to write this review because the hotell suprised us in a positive way as soon as we locked ourself in our room. The room was bigger than expected and separate toilet and shower rooms were an added bonus, so was the rather large balcony. If you are here for skiing/snowboarding you should be aware of the fact that this little village is placed at the foot of one of the largest centers in Les 3 Vallées called Meribel - however, to get to Meribel you will have to take a 20 minute ride with the gondola so its not very centrally positioned. The last gondola from Meribel down to Brides-Les-Bains leaves at 17:30 so any chance of catching an after party or having fun in Meribel after you are done skiing for the day will result in a cab drive which will cost you about 60€. There are a few bars in Brides (7 at the max) but the majority of these close between the hours of 22-24 so its not exactly a party city but if you are a small family with children I will imagine that this is a perfect replacement for the party places further up the Mountains (like Meribel, Val Thorens etc...) These were the positive things, unfortunately its also necessary to mention one very negative aspect of this hotel - which is the hotel manager. After staying for the hotel for about 3 nights, an issue occured when we tried to lock ourselves in to our room one night - the key simply would not go all the way in - even if we tried this with force. Granted, this was 2 in the morning and we had been out at a bar grabbing a couple of beers - but nevertheless, I've never been able to drink myself into a state where I were unable to unlock a door and neither of us was in any such state at this time either. After trying for a couple of minutes we started worrying about our computers, cameras etc inside the hotel room and decided to call a number posted in the reception downstairs for when you needed assistance beyond the receptions opening hours. That number obviously went to the hotel managers cell phone and he suddenly appeared tired and annoyed that he had to get up at 2 in the morning to assist his customers. He himself tried to open the lock with a universal key but got no further than we had, after trying for a very short time he decided to lock us into the room above ours. I tried telling him that we were concerned that someone had broken into the room and asked if he could contact the police on our behalf or at the very least scan through some of the hotels cameras to see if any unwanted guests had wandered the halls - this was not even something he was considering and he expressed this in a very rude manner while he locked us into our "new" room. The last thing we heard from him that night was that the lock for our original hotel room would be fixed by 8:30 the next morning. Waking up the next morning, I anxiously called the reception - which opens at 8:00 - and they had not even heard of the situation regarding the lock. I was also told that the hotel manager was unavailable but after insisting to talk to him (and being hung up on by the receptionist about 8 times) the hotel manager finally called back. Now if the attitude he had showed us was appaling - he took it to new hights this morning. First of all he let me hear it for bothering him at late hours in the night, obviously totally ignorant of the poster in the reception stating his number for after-hours assistance. Then he denied commiting to any timeframe regarding fixing the lock, but after a while he got a hold of someone who started drilling through the lock of our original hotel room. Now after this job was complete and our room was open (at 11:30 - not 8:30 as promised) - the helpful guys who opened the door for us put up a new lock, smiled when we thanked them and went on their way. 5 minutes later the hotel manager barged in our room claiming that we were responsible for destroying the lock and claimed that we would have to pay for the old lock, the new lock and the hourly rates for the two guys trying to fix the lock - if we did not do so he would kick us out and call the police. Now at this time I had been overly nice to this unpleasant character for too long just in order for him to get hold of the locksmith and help us solve this issue, but as soon as he started talking like the lock broke because we somehow did not know how to open locks with a key and wanted us to refund all his expenses I simply replied "that is NOT going to happen". At this point he left the room and when I followed him out into the hall to ask him to come back into our hotel room to sit down and have a calm discussion regarding what happened he did not even bother to answer me before he went into the elevator. After spending 30 minutes in the room just reassessing the situation we decided to go down to the reception to ask for the new key to our room, the message we received there was that the hotel manager had given strict orders for them not to give out any key before we left a credit card in the reception. They would or could not tell us why he wanted this, how long the card was to stay with the reception and whether any amount of money was to be withdrawn. Yet again we requested to speak to the manager, but the receptionist simply replied that he did not wish to speak to us - at this point the level of disbelief regarding this managers unprofessionalism had reached the point where we were completely speechless - it turned out that the only way to get our key back was to call our bank, have one of my credit cards barred and to leave it in the reception. At the time when I left the card in the reception they presented to me a handwritten receipt for 79€ and claimed that this was the amount we were due. I talked to the receptionist, who was a fairly reasonable guy, and explained to him that a lock can not simply break by putting a key into it - either it got broken by someone trying to make their way into our room - or it just jammed. Either way I said that the situation with this lock wasn't our responsibility at all and the receptionist gave a look and an answer in broken english telling me that he was more or less agreeing with our side of the story but his hands were tied with regards to the direct orders from his boss. So the final solution to the key issue was that I had to leave a credit card at the reception in order to get our new key. I called the hotel manager one last time and he once again threatened both to call the police and also kick us out of the hotel, he even claimed to have a video tape of the hall where the door to our room was and he more or less suggested that he had tape of us breaking the lock - I told him that it was great that he had a tape and that we wanted to take a look at it ourselves - of course, he did not agree to this. After doing a quick inspection of the hall outside of our hotel room it turned out that there were no such camera so he was in fact lying to me in order for me to budge into paying the 79€ euros he had "lost" that morning on fixing his own lock. So to sum up, his strategy was to threaten to kick us out and call the police when we denied to pay for the mishap with the lock. The positive side of the story is that I called Hotels.com's customer service when things were at its worst and they gave me excellent service, first by calling the hotel manager, and then by responding to my complaint e-mail stating that this experience was nothing they wanted for their customers and that they were to look further into the story before they could give me a final statement regarding the hotel and what had happened.